Sausage and Meat Preservation in Antiquity Frank Frost
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Sausage and Meat Preservation in Antiquity Frank Frost Y W I C K E D BELLY always gets me into trouble,” complained Odysseus,1 and indeed our general impression is that hunger was a frequent companion Mof the Greeks, Romans, and other peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world. A number of recent works have at- tempted to quantify the relationship of the Greeks with their food supply, and the picture they draw is one of small farmers leading a marginal existence and city dwellers forced to import grain from abroad.2 It is implied that the ordinary person, unable to afford the dishes described in the cookbooks by Archestratos or Apicius,3 would make do with diet primarily composed of cereal grains––wheat bread or barley cakes— relieved only by legumes, and fruits and vegetables in season. These studies investigate the cereal crops of antiquity, ex- trapolating the yield of wheat and barley by comparison with yields in modern developing countries, and factoring in rainfall and climate, generally assumed to be virtually the same as 1 Homer Od. 18.53–54; cf. 7.16ff. 2 T. Gallant, Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece (Stanford 1991); R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca 1991): P. Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1999). See my remarks on Gallant and Sallares in “Staying Alive on the Ancient Greek Farm,” AHB 6 (1992) 187–195. 3 S. D. Olson, A. Sens, edd., Archestratos of Gela (Oxford 2000): J. André, ed., Apicius. De re coquinaria (Paris 1965). Although Apicius was a famous esthete ca A.D. 30, the work we have under his name is a compendium from the 1st–4th centuries of our era: André 9–10. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999) 241–252 © 2001 GRBS 242 SAUSAGE AND MEAT PRESERVATION IN ANTIQUITY today in the eastern Mediterranean. The consensus is gloomy: the annual rainfall in Attica might produce a crop of barley every year but a decent crop of wheat only once in four years. And other sources of nourishment are regularly discounted. It is said that at certain times of year there was a surplus of young sheep and goats. But the lack of pasturage forced farmers to cull their flocks severely and to preserve primarily females who promised to be good milkers and wool producers, plus a very few vigorous males to keep the line going. Therefore, it is said, the average Greek and Roman person could never rely on meat in the diet.4 Because most of us in prosperous first-world countries eat too much meat and are being continually counseled to eat less, the role of meat as protein in the diet is sometimes overlooked or even scorned. But animal meat and fat, for both young, growing people and for frail elders, is a superb shortcut to nutrition. Jane Brody, a respected nutritionist who continually counseled moderation in the consumption of meat and fat, nevertheless conceded that if the average youth or adult could eat 150 grams of pork or beef liver once a week, they would satisfy most of their dietary requirements for a whole range of vitamins and minerals.5 The picture we get from Homeric descriptions of communal meals is definitely pre-Brodyite. The liver is eaten just as a snack, to start, then whole beeves are skewered and roasted over open flame and smoking gobbets dripping with fat are passed around to the banqueters. But a few short years later Hesiod barely mentions meat. The annual cereal crop is his entire preoccupation. And from that time on, the literature of dining is split between descriptions of haute cuisine and the perennial hunger that afflicted everyone else. Is this a true picture? 4 The consensus is expressed in Garnsey (supra n.2) 16–17. 5 J. E. Brody, Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book (New York 1982) 196–198; cf. Lavon J. Dunne, Nutrition Almanac 3 (New York 1990) 243. FRANK FROST 243 After Homeric times cattle were far too valuable as working farm animals and milk producers to be seen as a source of meat until the day the old ox fell dead in the traces or the old cow could not produce enough milk to justify the labor of feeding her. We may thus exempt beef, on the one hand, as a significant element in the ancient diet. Sheep and goats, on the other hand, were culled every year, sometimes twice a year, and the occasion called for great fes- tivities as the surplus animals were slaughtered and devoured. At all times of year, as well, sheep and goats were slaughtered on the altar of sacrifice and were often distributed among the members of the sacrificing cult. But normally these flocks were too valuable for their wool and for the cheese that could be made from their milk to be used as food animals during the rest of the year. The pig produces neither wool nor milk, therefore one might wonder at the prominence of pigs mentioned in the Greek and Roman diet. What the pig does produce is more pigs. Whereas a sheep or goat rarely produces more than one or two offspring a year, the pig will produce at least eight per farrow, and even as many as twelve. The Roman agronomists, in fact, favored a triage of any more than eight in order to keep all the survivors healthy and well fed (Varro Rust. 2.4.19). Both sheep and goats have a relatively long gestation of five months. But a sow carries her litter for only 110 days, and when she is young and healthy she can bear two litters a year. The pig is also easier to feed. Pigs are basically omnivores; they will eat any kind of vegetable matter, whether leaf, seed, fruit, root, or the residue from oil or wine-making. They will eat any other living or dead thing and even the remains of other pigs that have been slaughtered. They are easy to raise and their meat and by-products go a long way. “It is a lazy man who buys his side meat from the butcher,” said Varro (Rust. 2.4.2). The relative values of sheep, goats, and pigs can be calculated in the prices established for sacrificial animals. In the great calendar of the deme Erchia, sheep and 244 SAUSAGE AND MEAT PRESERVATION IN ANTIQUITY goats are priced at ten drachmas or more while the piglets are always three drachmas.6 It is obvious that meat was available in the Greek diet but subject to seasonal surpluses or shortages, particularly in the case of the pig, which at the age of eight months, dressed out, can produce as much as fifty kilos of usable meat, meat by- products, and fat, four to five times as much as a sheep or goat.7 It seems obvious that the very first person to slaughter a pig for a meal immediately began to wonder how to save the remainder for another day. Therefore we should consider the various strategies for preserving surplus meat in every analysis of the ancient diet. Salting as a means of preservation was well understood in antiquity and salted fish––generically called tãrixow––may have been the primary commodity. The verb tarixeÊv generally means to preserve by pickling.8 Theophrastos’ shameless man, while at dinner at the house of another, takes part in the sacrifice before dinner and slips some of the meat away to be salted later (Char. 9.2). Hams are referred to as kvl∞new tetari- xeum°noi. The verb is also used to describe Egyptian mummifica- tion, although in that case saltpeter was used instead of salt.9 While Greek authors were generally too fine to discuss the daily business of animal husbandry, the Roman authors who were actual farmers and not afraid to get their hands dirty provide most of our details. Cato describes step by step the procedure for salting hams. Salt is laid down in the bottom of a large jar. The hams are 6 G. Daux, “La grande démarche: un nouveau calendrier sacrificiel d’Attique (Erchia),” BCH 87 (1963) 606–610. In Daux’s “Le calendrier de Thorikos,” AntCl 52 (1983) 153–154, lines 29–30, 55–56, sacrificial oxen are priced at 40–50 drachmas. On full grown pigs, see next note. 7 This would explain the price of forty drachmas for a full grown sacrificial pig in W. S. Ferguson, “The Salaminioi of Heptaphylai and Sounion,” Hesperia 7 (1938) 5. 8 LSJ 9 s.v. On the biochemical process see A. Davidson, The Oxford Com- panion to Food (Oxford 1999) s.v. “salting.” 9 Hams, Pollux 6.52; mummification, Hdt. 2.86, where we find litron, an older form of the word nitron. FRANK FROST 245 placed skin side down on the salt and are covered with another layer of salt. Then more hams and layers of salt are added until the jar is full and covered with a final layer of salt. After five days the hams are taken out and put back in reverse order. After twelve days the hams are taken out, brushed off, and dried for two days. They are then cleaned, coated with oil, and cold smoked for another two days before being hung to store in the meat house (Rust. 162.1–3). Columella gives two methods for preserving hams. He partially repeats Cato’s instructions for salting in jars, or what might be called the wet process, for the hams remain in their brine. He also describes a dry process in which the pig is boned.